American Marconi Wireless News - Brazil court orders removal of fake posts amid patron saint election row

Rumors, accusations and fierce denials about the fate of the saint have dominated the final stretch of campaigning before Sunday's election, laying bare divisions between Catholics and Evangelicals in the deeply religious nation.

Leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is facing a too-close-to-call election race against senator Bolsonaro, and both sides have clung to last-minute controversies in a bid to win over crucial undecided voters.

The furore erupted after media reports that figures in the Catholic Church were concerned about the future status of the saint, Our Lady of Aparecida.

This collided with the unearthing of an abandoned 2007 bill, initially proposed by a Bolsonaro-aligned lawmaker, to demote the patron saint.

Flavio Bolsonaro fiercely denied such plans as "fake news", but the issue struck a nerve in a country where the majority Catholic population which reveres the saint, tends to back Lula.

A booming Evangelical population became a key electoral base for far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro, and now his son.

On the campaign trail, Lula clutched a figure of Our Lady of Aparecida, Brazil's beloved Black Madonna, declaring that "messing" with her was "unacceptable."

Supreme Court justice Andre Mendonca on Friday ordered the removal of posts saying Flavio Bolsonaro intends to strip the patron saint of her role, which were "notoriously untrue."

The decision was upheld late Wednesday by the electoral court.

Meanwhile, the police opened an investigation Wednesday into what Supreme Court Justice Flavio Dino described as an "apparent wave of attacks" against religious images in some parts of the country.

These attacks included the destruction of statues of saints in churches in Salvador and the defacement of a statue of Our Lady of Aparecida with an axe in a chapel in the state of Mato Grosso.

Brazil has the second-largest Christian population in the world, after the United States, according to the Pew Research Center.

While Lula holds a slight lead in the polls ahead of the first round election on Sunday, with he and Bolsonaro far ahead of the other 10 candidates.

To win in the first round a candidate needs more than 50 percent of valid votes.

Polls show Lula and Bolsonaro in a dead heat in a potential run-off on October 25.

L.Davis--AMWN